Bolitho shouted, “Now!”

At his side Proby added his weight to the wheel, as with a scream of blocks the yards began to swing, the sails flapping in protest, but answering the challenge of wind and rudder.

“Run out!” Bolitho felt ice cold as the larboard battery squealed across the sanded planks. “Fire as your guns bear!”

He pounded the rail, counting each frantic second. For a moment he thought that he had mistimed the change of course, but even as he waited, holding his breath and hardly daring to watch, the bowsprit swung lazily across the French ship’s high stern, almost brushing away a small group of sailors which had gathered above the hammock nettings.

Herrick ran from gun to gun, making sure that each successive shot went home. Not that he need have troubled. As the French gunners ran dazedly from the opposite side the first shots went crashing home. The Phalarope shuddered as she ground against the little brig, but maintained her way steadily down the ship’s side, her guns belching fire and death above the heads of the stunned boarders and the remaining members of the brig’s crew.

Bolitho winced as the quarterdeck nine-pounders joined in the din. But still there was no answer from the French ship. Bolitho had guessed correctly that the guns which stared impotently at the Phalarope’s smashing attack would have been in action right up to the moment of grappling and boarding the little brig.

He watched as great pieces of the frigate’s bulwark caved in and fragments of torn planking rose above the smoke as if thrown from an invisible hand. An axe flashed dully, and Bolitho yelled, “He’s trying to free himself!” He drew his sword. “Over you go, lads! Boarders away!”

As the Phalarope ground to a sluggish halt, her bows locked into the brig’s fallen rigging and spars, Bolitho ran down the port gangway and clambered on to the Witch of Looe’s tilting deck. For a moment nobody followed him and then with a great roar, half cheer and half scream, the waiting seamen swept over the bulwark behind him.

Most of the French sailors, caught between the Phalarope’s savage gunfire and the revived members of the brig’s crew, threw up their hands in surrender, but Bolitho thrust them aside, his sword raised high towards his own men. “Come on, lads! We’ll take the frigate!” There would be time enough for the boarders later, he thought vaguely.

Once up the frigate’s shot-pitted side the resistance became fierce and deadly. Wild, crazed faces floated around Bolitho as he hacked his way aft towards the poop, and his feet barely supported him in the heel-thick layer of blood which seemed to cover the deck like fresh paint. The enemy’s upper-deck had been crammed with men. Some were boarders recalled from the Witch of Looe, and others were gunners caught off guard by the Phalarope’s sudden change of course. This momentarily disorganised mass of men had received the full force of the broadside. All the Phalarope’s larboard twelve-pounders and the quarterdeck battery as well, each double-shotted and loaded with grape for good measure. It looked as if a maniac had been throwing buckets of blood everywhere. Even the lower edges of the sails were speckled in scarlet, and fragments of men hung from upended guns and splintered bulwarks alike.